A grandmother sentenced to death by firing squad in Bali after being convicted of drug smuggling is attempting to sue the UK Foreign Office in the high court for "failing to support her case".

Lawyers for Lindsay Sandiford (56), pictured, said the British Government had breached an obligation to her.

After being caught attempting to smuggle £1.6m (€1.87m) of cocaine into Indonesia, Sandiford said she had simply been trying to protect her adult sons, one of whom had been threatened by a drugs gang.

A spokesman for the charity Reprieve said Sandiford, having exhausted her finances to pay for a lawyer, now had no money to pay for an appeal – which involves filing a complicated legal document in Indonesian, a language she does not speak, by February 12.

A Foreign Office spokesman said it did not fund lawyers for Britons arrested abroad but added: "We have made repeated representations to the Indonesia authorities and the Foreign Secretary raised the case during the recent state visit of the Indonesian President.